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Supreme Court

In his latest column, Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy In Media calls on Congress to impeach Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan in the wake of the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision, saying they were biased in the case because they had both officiated weddings for gay couples and because Kagan is a “known lesbian.”

“Members of Congress taking up this cause will not get sympathetic headlines in the media,” he writes. “But it is something that has to be done if Independence Day is going to have any meaning left at all.”

He adds that a spokesman for Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s Foundation for Moral Law had told him that “the failure by Kagan and Ginsburg to withdraw from the case leaves them open to impeachment and removal from the bench.”

Whatever the reason for the putsch, our form of government has been overthrown and another put in its place—a judicial dictatorship that is devoted to elevating to protected status a sexual minority seeking the abolition of traditional values. Left unchecked in its drive for power over others, this cabal threatens not only our heritage but America’s standing in the world as a superpower. It appears the Obama administration wants to spend more money on Pentagon gay pride events and climate change than actual weapons systems to defend America.

As we get ready to celebrate Independence Day, however, we can rest assured that the American people remember enough about the founding of their country that they cannot and will not accept a judicial tyranny. That would make a complete mockery of what July 4th is all about and what millions of Americans have sacrificed for.

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Our media didn’t treat it as a big deal, but Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg had both officiated at gay weddings. Groups such as the National Organization for Marriage, the American Family Association, the Coalition of African American Pastors, and the Foundation for Moral Law had called for Kagan and Ginsburg to withdraw from the case.

Matthew Kidd, executive director of the Foundation for Moral Law, told Accuracy in Media that the failure by Kagan and Ginsburg to withdraw from the case leaves them open to impeachment and removal from the bench.

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In the case of Kagan, an Obama appointee, she may have had a personal conflict-of-interest. This is a sensitive matter, but various reports indicated that Kagan was a known lesbian before she was nominated to the Court by President Obama. For example, the gay blog QueerTY had identified her as a lesbian. That would mean she was compromised on homosexual issues prior to her ascension to the bench and after she was confirmed. This is a conflict of interest that cannot be tolerated.

Whether the reports of her lesbianism are true or not, we know that Kagan had an extremely radical record as Dean of Harvard Law School (2003 to 2009) where she promoted homosexuality and transgenderism. Nevertheless, she was confirmed to the Supreme Court in a 63 to 37 vote.

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We now see the evidence of what happens when the media and Congress fail to do their jobs.

Congress, however, can try to undo some of the damage by holding hearings into the possible impeachment of Justices Kagan and Ginsburg. This would be one way of getting to the bottom of Scalia’s sensational charge that America’s democratic system has been subverted and stolen from the American people.

We are bound to hear that impeachment would be difficult and conviction impossible. There’s always an excuse for not taking bold action in Washington, D.C. But a congressional failure to act, in the wake of Scalia’s extraordinary charge of a judicial Putsch, would suggest that celebrating July 4th means fireworks and nothing more.

I think enough Americans are sufficiently concerned about this matter that they want to see some real fireworks, in the form of Congress exposing the lies, corruption and conflicts of interest that went into the sick and tyrannical gay marriage ruling.

Members of Congress taking up this cause will not get sympathetic headlines in the media. But it is something that has to be done if Independence Day is going to have any meaning left at all.

Michael Savage lit into the Supreme Court over its ruling striking down state bans on same-sex marriage, warning his listeners on Monday that gay rights advocates are planning to prosecute pastors who refuse to officiate gay couples’ weddings.

Savage pointed to a 2014 story out of Idaho where two pastors at a for-profit chapel claimed they were being threatened with jail time for breaking a local nondiscrimination ordinance. As it turned out, the chapel was exempt from the ordinance because it was a religious entity. “We’re back in the Soviet Union now,” Savage declared.

He also linked his false claim about pastors going to prison with last week’s ISIS massacre of European vacationers in Tunisia: “Gays will cheer. As they start throwing pastors in prison, you’ll see who’ll cheer them. Next we’ll get the arena and the lions, get the arena and the lions and bring them in from Tunisia.”

“I feel like I’m being punched left and right from the Supreme Court today, I’ve never saw anything like this in my life,” Savage said, before praising Mike Huckabee’s call to defy the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling.

In an interview with Alaska GOP politician and conservative talk show host Joe Miller that was posted online today, Zmirak maintained that gay rights advocates pose a greater threat to the U.S. than ISIS since they plan to impose a version of “gay Sharia” where Christians will be forced to pay a discriminatory jizya tax.

In an interview yesterday on “The Eric Metaxas Show,” Zmirak predicted that all churches and groups that oppose same-sex marriage will now lose their tax-exempt status, claiming that Justice Anthony Kennedy surreptitiously suggested that churches will lose their freedom of religion.

“He was opening a door for the future destruction of orthodox Christian churches in America,” Zmirak said. “It was conscious, it was intentional and I think if we have a president like Hillary Clinton, in the first 100 days of her administration, you will see the tax-exemption of every faithful church and synagogue in America revoked. It will be presented as progress, ‘love has won and now it’s time to shoot the prisoners.’”

Metaxas claimed that the U.S. is now turning into “Germany in the ‘30s” when people “had no idea” where Nazism “would end up.”

This past Sunday, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins delivered the sermon at Robert Jeffress’ church in Dallas. Although Perkins’ visit had been planned more than a year in advance, Jeffress was delighted that it ended up falling just two days after the Supreme Court struck down gay marriage bans nationwide, which Jeffress called “the greatest, most historic, landmark blunder in the history of the United States Supreme Court.”

Jeffress had some good news, though: The Supreme Court’s decision and the ensuing rainbow-flag projection on the White House all just confirm the Bible’s reports of what will happen before the return of Christ.

“What happened Friday was nothing short of an affront in the face of Almighty God,” Jeffres said in his introduction of Perkins. “And how did our president respond? President Obama responded Friday night by bathing the White House, the people’s house, in colors that represent what the Bible calls degredation, depravity and sexual perversion.”

Jeffress and his church, he said, are “not going to be silenced by the liberal left, Barack Obama or the United States Supreme Court.”

“We’re not despondent, we’re not discouraged in the least,” he added, “because everything that happened Friday is simply confirmation of what the Bible says is going to happen before the return of Jesus Christ.”

Perkins also addressed the marriage equality ruling, saying he was less concerned about being “on the wrong side of history” than on “the wrong side of the one who’s going to write the final chapter of history.”

The government, he said, had “usurped” issues like marriage and turned “the sacred into the secular.”

“I cannot see a more clear visual representation of where our nation stands,” he said, “than on Friday morning, our courts turned the sacred into the secular and that night, the president bathing the White House in the colors of Pride. God have mercy on America.”

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, told radio host Jan Mickelson on Tuesday that House Speaker John Boehner tried to punish him for bucking House leadership by denying him tickets to see the Supreme Court oral arguments in King v. Burwell, the Affordable Care Act case, but then Chief Justice John Roberts saved the day in the end by finding him a seat.

“He’s also trying to block me from hearing oral arguments before the Supreme Court, on Obamacare, for example, so I went to Chief Justice Roberts and he gave me a couple tickets on his special front bench and we went ahead anyway,” King told Mickelson.

The Supreme Court finished its session on Monday, ending a term filled with landmark decisions regarding fair housing, marriage equality, and healthcare.

On Wednesday, PFAW hosted a telebriefing for members about the end of the Court’s term and the implications of several cases. PFAW Communications Director Drew Courtney moderated a dialogue among PFAW Senior Fellows Elliot Mincberg and Jamie Raskin, Right Wing Watch researcher Miranda Blue, and PFAW Executive Vice President for Policy and Program Marge Baker.

Raskin covered Obergefell v. Hodges and Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. He first noted that Obergefell would not be possible without the “many decades of intense social struggle and millions of people coming out of the closet” which created a momentous societal shift in public opinion of LGBT rights. The Arizonacase, which effectively obstructed state legislature’s gerrymandering efforts, was also a huge triumph for democracy, because, as Raskin notes, “the whole point of democracy is that power begins and resides with people.”

At the end of the briefing, Courtney asked the panelists about the next session of the court, including a union case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, that was recently added to the docket. Raskin labeled the case as “the new wedge to destroy unions,” and another GOP attempt to use legal doctrine to undermine progressive initiatives like public sector unions.

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said yesterday that he would support impeaching Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan over their participation in the Supreme Court’s marriage equality case whenever “the public is ready” for such proceedings.

King, a guest on Iowa talk radio host Jan Mickelson’s program, took a call from a listener who said of the justices who voted to strike down same-sex marriage bans, “I submit that these are rogue justices and they can be impeached and removed by Congress.”

King told the caller that he agreed with him, but “impeachment itself,, we have learned throughout history, is a political decision” and the timing is “up to the will of the people.”

“That provision does exist, and let’s hear what the public has to say,” he added. “If that were put up before me today, and I think I mentioned Ginsburg and Kagan as being two that had been conducting same-sex marriages on their spare time and did not recuse themselves, I would put up the vote to remove them from office. And I’d like to see that case heard again and it would come down four-to-three and it in the end it would come back to the states for that decision, where it should be. But I don’t know if the public is ready for that.”

But in the near term, King said, the nation must turn to “nationwide civil disobedience” in defiance of the marriage decision. He also repeated his plan for states to “abolish civil marriage” in order to deny the benefits and responsibilities of marriage to gay and lesbian couples.

“By doing so we can avoid the litigation that’s coming at every one of our churches,” he said, claiming that gay rights advocates “will not stop until they can force a priest to conduct a same-sex marriage at the altar of a Catholic church.”

Earlier in the program, King went on a long tangent linking the U.S. Constitution not only to the Magna Carta and to Greek and Roman law, but also to the New Testament.

“You can go piece by piece of this all the way through the history of the foundation of western civilization to get to the underpinnings of the pillars of American exceptionalism,” he said. “And we seem to have forgotten about those underpinnings and now we’re at this place where there is no right and wrong and the rule of tyranny of whoever can get leverage in whatever form and five justices in the Supreme Court setting a policy that turns over thousands of years of human experience.”

“This Constitution is rendered an artifact of history if we let this stand,” he warned.

On Tuesday’s edition of “Trunews,” End Times broadcaster Rick Wiles delivered a eulogy for America and lamented that “the America I knew and loved is dead, rest in peace. It will not be resurrected.” Wiles cited the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize marriage equality as the cause of our nation’s untimely death, calling the ruling “the final abomination.”

“How can I pledge allegiance to the flag of a nation that celebrates sexual perversion, pornography and baby killing?” Wiles asked. He later added that he is "embarrassed to be a legal citizen in a nation that is openly promoting sexual perversion and compelling other nations to rebel against God too.”

According to Wiles, the death of America has ushered in a new era for the country: the era of Babylon. He criticized the “Babylonian pagans”— which is what he now calls American citizens — for rejecting the Lord’s presence and even chastised his evangelical peers, declaring, “Christians who are acting like nothing seriously happened last Friday are like people sitting on a fiery sofa in a burning house.”

Wiles, who will no longer say the pledge of allegiance or the phrase “God Bless America,” warned listeners that “there is no end to the sexual perversion this country has now opened itself to, the floodgates to sexual perversion – lewdness, sorcery, witchcraft and rebellion – opened wide last Friday.”

He also cited a Russian MP who claimed that the U.S. will “use military might and intimidation” to force other countries to accept same-sex marriage and spread its “gay delirium.”

The fire and brimstone tribute to America ended with Wiles’ assertion that “the final abomination” was upon us, which Wiles said was a reference to a dream Pastor T.D. Hale had in 2005. In his dream, Wiles said, Hale saw an American Eagle shot down in the Oval Office, with a voice saying “Weep in the house, for the misery that shall come shortly.”

Hale envisioned a smirking President Obama, dressed in all black, stepping out from behind his desk and twisting off the Eagle’s head.

It’s only been five days since the court issued its ruling, but conservative pundits have already predicted that gay marriage will ultimately be responsible for natural disasters, terrorist attacks and the destruction of freedom.

1)Terrorist attacks

While there haven’t been any terrorist attacks against the U.S. since the court’s ruling, whenever there are, anti-LGBT activists will know who to blame: gay people who want to get married.

“They have thumbed their nose at God’s design for man, a man and a woman designed from the beginning of time and creation, and it will not, it will not stand,” she added. “While we’re under such terrible terror threats, you know, our protections have been lifted and that’s what they don’t understand.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, also warned that “God’s hand of protection will be withdrawn as future actions from external and internal forces will soon make clear. I will do all I can to prevent such harm, but I am gravely fearful that the stage has now been set.”

“America’s elite leadership have taken the side of the enemies of God, and He will take notice,” WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah warned, claiming that such divine judgment “could come in the form of an attack on our country from foreign power or terrorist group.”

Rick Wiles, host of the End Times radio program “Trunews,” similarly predicted that God will now “lift His hand of protection from this nation” and “permit America’s enemies to attack this nation.”

Cliff Kincaid of the conservative group Accuracy in Media was a little more tame in his reasoning but came to the same conclusion: “A country that descends to the bottom of the barrel morally and culturally will not be able to defend itself against its foreign adversaries and enemies. Indeed, we have the evidence all around us that, as the culture has degenerated, our ability to defend ourselves has simultaneously been weakened.”

2)Forced gay sex

The right-wing warnings of “forced homosexuality” are now coming true, at least according to one pastor. Tim Brooks of the Christian Ministries Church told one conservative radio program that gay people, just like the men of Sodom who tried to rape angelic visitors, “are trying to force their lifestyle on him, come out and have sex with us, have to participate.”

Record-breaking floods have inundated Washington, D.C. just days after the Supreme Court decided they knew better than God. I seem to remember another time in history when there was a record-breaking flood.

God painted the sky with rainbow colors after that flood. This go-around - Obama painted the White House with rainbow colors.

Anybody got an ark?

4)Food shortages

Heavy rain may not be the only result of same-sex marriage (besides equal marriage rights for gay people), as some Religious Right pundits also believe that divine wrath will come in the form of food shortages and drought.

Wiles warned that “God will cut off America’s food supply and this nation will be hit with disease, pestilence, drought, natural calamities and a great shaking.”

“Nothing grabs the attention of the distracted faster than the complete removal of all creature comforts and extravagant wealth,” Christian Post columnist Michael Bresciani said. “Crops will fail, stores will close and commerce will come almost to a complete stop. It will not be pretty. Add to that, attacks from our enemies and natural disasters rising to meet the pride of the sinners’ right where it hurts the most.”

Five years ago, Religious Right leaders confidently predicted that prison cells and court rooms would fill up with pastors after the passage of the 2009 Hate Crimes Act. Of course, such events never occurred, but now the same anti-LGBT activists are making the samefalseclaims about the supposed consequences of same-sex marriage.

“Pastors who refuse to perform gay marriage and preach from the Bible should prepare for hate crime charges,” Starnes said. “All dissent will be silenced.”

Richard Land, a former leader of the Southern Baptist Convention’s political arm, was a little more cautious, explaining that pastors will indeed face prison if they refuse to officiate same-sex couple’s weddings, but only after the government takes a few “intermediate steps.”

6)Media censorship

Just days prior to the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling, Glenn Beck said that if the court were to decide in favor of same-sex couples, then the Bible would be outlawed as a “hate book.” Just hours after the decision came down, Beck offered another dire warning: He will lose his show.

“This could mean the end of radio broadcasts like mine,” Beck said, insisting that he will be taken off the air simply because he is “for traditional marriage.”

7)Taking kids from their parents

Chicago-based pastor Erwin Lutzer believes that parents who oppose same-sex marriage may lose custody of their children following the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling, predicting that “parents that homeschool children, religious parents, will be diagnosed as culturally intolerant and personality intolerant. And therefore, as a result, their children will be taken away from them.”

Rios, the AFA official, even warned that children may be forced to spy on their parents like in the Soviet Union.

8)This means war

Conservative legal activist Larry Klayman denounced the marriage equality ruling as a “harbinger to revolution,” urging Americans to take to rebellion like the Founding Fathers did.

“If evil despots have compromised even our Supreme Court, the ultimate protector and ‘decider’ of our rights, then what choice is left to us?” Klayman asked. “John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin certainly know, from their own experience with King George, and from their graves they see what now again lies ahead and what must be done to restore freedom to our shores.”

One conservative pundit, Bill Muehlenberg, told readers that “a major proper response for Christians and others” to the Supreme Court’s ruling “is massive civil disobedience and defiance of this homo-fascist decision.”

9)Pedophilia now legal

Former House GOP Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who promised that “all hell is going to break loose” if the Supreme Court decided to strike down state bans on same-sex marriage, declared that he has uncovered a “secret memo” from the Department of Justice that reveals plans to legalize “having sex with little boys,” along with bestiality and polygamy.

The website run by West, the former congressman, even claimed that pedophilia supporters celebrated the Friday ruling. As the myth-busting website Snopes notes, the blog post on West’s site was “lifted almost entirely from an article published in 2011 and in no way reflected a claim prompted by a June 2015 Supreme Court decision regarding same-sex marriage.” They add that the 2011 story “originated with a writer who has been asserting for years (less than accurately) that the push for gay rights is manifestly setting the stage for legalized ‘pedophilia rights.’”

Perhaps the blog post’s author received this news from David Barton, the right-wing pseudo-historian who just days before the court issued its ruling alleged, falsely, that pedophilia became “legally protected” following the passage of the 2009 Hate Crimes Act.

10)Criminalization of Christianity

The most prominent claim coming from the Religious Right in response to the Supreme Court’s decision has been what Family Research Council President Tony Perkins has called the government attempt to “eliminate” religious beliefs that oppose gay rights.

“In one appalling decision, the Supreme Court has effectively opened the door to the criminalization of Christianity when it comes to the marriage issue ... and not just Christianity, but every major religion that supports God’s model for marriage and family,” warned Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America.

Right-wing pundit Matt Barber made a similar claim: “The goal of ‘LGBT’ activists and secular progressives has long been to pit the government directly against the free exercise of religion – Christianity in particular – and to silence all dissent.”

One FRC official, Craig James, said that conservatives who oppose the same-sex marriage decision should respond to the coming persecution and ridicule “in love” … just like the families of the Charleston massacre.

Alabama has been center stage of the gay marriage fight since Moore, with the backing of fellow Republicans, used his position as chief justice of the state’s supreme court to order public officials to defy a federal court decision striking down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.

Beeker, the public service commissioner, kicked things off by calling the Supreme Court’s decision “an assault on God” and on “our Christian heritage” that rendered the 10th Amendment “null and void.”

“A runaway judiciary,” he continued, “is a bigger threat to the United States than ISIS. Liberal judges have done more harm to our country and our Constitution than Al Qaeda."

Not to be outdone, Sanctity of Marriage Alabama spokesman Tom Ford, who called marriage equality part of a “war against God” and a “new invention” the results of which “no one knows.”

But he had some guesses. “The best indication that I have of what it will bring is what we’ve seen in the Bible,” he said. “I can go to Soddom and Gomorrah. In history, we can go to Pompeii, we can go to other places, we can look at Nero in the time of Rome. And in these times God brought destruction, and he also raised up people to speak his truth and he also drew people to himself. And this is our hope.”

He also warned of the dire consequences on children: “If we give our children to the sodomites to educate, when it’s all said and done and they believe that sodomy is okay, why are we surprised?”

Baptist street preacher Tommy Littleton sounded a similar alarm, saying “the human rights issue of our era” is “protecting our children from what is nothing short of gay liberation theology, full sexual liberation.”

“Today we live in probably the most challenging time of our generation, of our nation’s history,” he said, warning of an impending “climate of fear, loss of free speech, loss of religious freedom, and the overwhelming tsunami that is coming against us and our families and our churches and our children.”

After arguing that curriculum standards like Common Core indoctrinate children in homosexuality, he urged the “normal majority” to “rise up and say I don’t want my children to be educated by people who are confused about their own sexuality.”

“Are we really in an honest conversation on the other side or are the LGBT people being used for a much greater and horrendous agenda?” he asked. “I believe they are.”

Becky Gerritson, head of the Wetumpka Tea Party, cited an unfounded right-wing rumor about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wanting to lower the age of consent to 12 years old to warn that the court’s decision paves the way for adult-child marriage and plural marriage.

She urged the audience to “have compassion” on “future victims of this decision” who will be trapped in plural marriages and all the “horrors that it will play out in their lives.”

Eidsmoe, who works for Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s Foundation for Moral Law, hinted at future challenges to the Supreme Court ruling, saying “this is far from over” and referring to legislators and probate judges who are ready to “obey God rather than man.”

The Supreme Court’s decision, he said, “constitutes an illegitimate means of reaching and unconstitutional decision to create an invalid institution to further the perpetration of immoral acts.”

On Monday, Houston-based radio show host Sam Malone criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality, lambasting the court along with the “extremists of the gay agenda.” These activists, he said, “are anti-tolerance and not one of them has come out to say respect the religious views of the 98 percent of America who aren’t gay.”

Malone’s guest, Texas GOP activist Jared Woodfill, similarly warned that the gay community is “coming after us,” reminding conservatives that “it’s a war that we’re in right now.”

“The gay activists refuse to preach tolerance,” Malone said. “It’s like dealing with Muslim terrorists, there is no tolerance. If 0.08 percent of the population are gay men, that’s 0.08 percent, who is going to stand up for the 98 percent who aren’t and are religious and have a firm foundation in the Bible and say, ‘This is wrong, I don’t want to be involved, you do it, if that’s your thing, you do it, ain’t my thing and I don’t want anything to do with it.’ Obama launched the war on religion in America.”

Malone’s other guest, conservative blogger Stacy Washington, said that the court ruled the way it did on marriage equality because Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan are secretly gay. She also suggested that Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote a dissenting opinion, is also gay.

“Elena Kagan and Sotomayor, they’re both homosexuals, they were all over those ones they felt like they could influence, and they got Roberts because he’s got something going on, he’s got something going on there,” she said.

Malone predicted that Kagan “will come out in a month or so,” claiming that her secret homosexuality made it a “filthy ruling.”

Rep. Glenn Grothman, Republican of Wisconsin, joined Milwaukee-area radio host Vicki McKenna on Friday to discuss the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down state bans on same-sex marriage. Grothman told McKenna that the Supreme Court’s reasoning, which was based on the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, was an affront to the Americans who died in the Civil War because it was “a strong religious war to further a Christian lifestyle by getting rid of slavery.”

“Our president during the Civil War was, of course, Abraham Lincoln, who was known as the most biblical of presidents, somebody who quoted the Bible a lot,” he said. "In the Civil War, some 600,000 people died in a country that was much less populated than that today. And it was a much more religious country and I think a lot of people who died fighting in that war felt they died fighting for a religious cause, you know, ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ and all that.

“I think it would shock those people who died in that war to find out the constitutional amendment which was ratified kind of as a culmination of their great efforts and their great deaths would be 150 years later, a little less than 150 years later, used by these five robed, arrogant, robed people to take this constitutional amendment and say that that constitutional amendment that was drafted after the Civil War was in fact an amendment designed to say that same-sex marriage had to be legal.”

He added that the decision is “particularly offensive” given that the 14th Amendment was “drafted by a people who felt they had just engaged in a strong religious war to further a Christian lifestyle by getting rid of slavery.”

Phyllis Schlafly is none too pleased with the Supreme Court’s decision striking down state gay marriage bans, and has a modest proposal for Congress: Pass a resolution affirming the “dignity of opposite-sex married couples,” especially that of couples where “a provider-husband is the principal breadwinner and his wife is dedicated to the job of homemaker.”

While this resolution might not change much in the short term, the anti-feminist crusader writes in her syndicated column today, it might act as an inspiration to the anti-gay movement as they continue to fight marriage equality.

Justice Kennedy's opinion for a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court has rightly been condemned for its lack of grounding in the constitutional text he is sworn to uphold. Unable to find gay marriage in either the due process clause or the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, Kennedy ultimately rests his case on what Justice Clarence Thomas sarcastically called the "dignity clause" of the Constitution.

There is no such clause, of course, although Kennedy's majority opinion mentioned "dignity" nine times. But if dignity can be conferred by decisions of the Supreme Court, then Congress can do so, too.

Therein lies a first response: Congress should formally recognize the dignity of opposite-sex married couples and resolve to protect that dignity in our laws. A joint resolution should recite the many reasons why the special union of husband and wife has been honored for "millennia," as Kennedy admitted.

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A crash program to rebuild the traditional American nuclear family is urgently necessary for continuing our nation's political and economic success in this century. This won't happen if we transform marriage into a means of giving "dignity" to mostly childless homosexuals.

Once Congress is on a roll to confer dignity, it should confer an extra measure of dignity on the single-earner family, where a provider-husband is the principal breadwinner and his wife is dedicated to the job of homemaker, a role more socially beneficial than working in the paid labor force.

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After reciting the foregoing reasons and many others, Congress should conclude its resolution by formally resolving that the traditional family, founded on a married husband and wife, carries special dignity and deserves special recognition because it provides unique benefits to society.

This is not to deny that every human person has value and dignity, or that other domestic relationships may have some value in limited circumstances. But Congress should respond to Kennedy with a ringing affirmation of the unique dignity that should be accorded to society's foundational unit: the marriage of husband and wife.

Naysayers will scoff that the foregoing resolution doesn't change the Supreme Court decision, and you can imagine a late-night comedian comparing it to the medal of courage the Wizard of Oz presented to the Cowardly Lion. But movie fans will recall how that gesture inspired Dorothy and her companions toward achieving their goal.

Last week on “The Sam Malone Show,” Dan Gainor of the right-wing Media Research Center alleged that the Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold marriage equality is part of a wider government war by liberals to crush all opposition.

Gainor went so far as to compare liberals to Nazis: “Just like the Brownshirts in the 1930s, they are telegraphing their attack, they are telling you what they are going to do, they are telling you how they are going to do it to you and if you are caught off guard when this happens, then you’re a fool.”

Malone agreed with Gainor’s dire assessment, alleging that President Obama is engineering this supposed chaos in a “distractionary” attempt to “take control.”

Michael Farris, the chancellor of Patrick Henry College and chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, told Iowa talk radio host Jan Mickelson yesterday that with its ruling striking down bans on gay marriage, the Supreme Court threw out “the entire institution of our courts and our judiciary and respect for the law” in pursuit of a “rainbow utopia.”

Repeating the Religious Right line that Justices Ruth Bader Kingsburg and Elena Kagan should have recused themselves from the case because they have officiated legal same-sex marriages, Farris suggested setting up a “tribunal” to review recusal motions for Supreme Court justices. If such a body existed, Farris insisted, the marriage decision “would have gone 4-3 in the other direction.”

As it is, he said, the Supreme Court just threw the entire institution of the courts out the window: “I have a hard time imagining myself standing before the Supreme Court and saying ‘your honor’ or ‘Justice.’ They’re politicians in black robes, they’re acting as a legislature. And the entire institution of our courts and our judiciary and respect for the law all have been thrown away by the Supreme Court of the United States in pursuit of this rainbow utopia. It’s crazy.”

Farris also discussed ways for churches to avoid public accommodation laws that prohibit businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, implying that churches will be forced to perform weddings for gay or lesbian couples. (In reality, churches are not forced to perform marriages they disagree with.)

“If a church gets attacked legally on this basis, they should fight, they should defend,” he said, adding that “it’s far, far better to be in trouble with a gay rights group in court than it is to be in trouble with Almighty God for participating in evil.”

End Times radio host Rick Wiles said on his “Trunews” radio program yesterday that he made an appearance in Washington, D.C., on Friday to warn people celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision striking down state bans on same-sex marriage that the country, as a result of the court ruling, will soon face divine destruction.

This will be his final warning call as a prophetic watchman, Wiles said, since now “judgment is certain.”

“In 2012, the Lord had shown me that America is morphing into Babylon and I will say this to you: The metamorphic transformation is complete. America became Mystery Babylon last Friday and I know her fate,” he said, adding that the Bible advises people to “flee from the midst of Babylon.”

Wiles told Alan Colmes today that he is preparing to leave the U.S. to an undisclosed location, claiming that God will “lift His hand of protection from this nation” and “permit America’s enemies to attack this nation.”

He also predicted economic devastation, food shortages, “disease, pestilence, drought, natural calamities and a great shaking.”

“America is over,” Wiles said. “The final stage will be a surprise attack by America’s enemies which will end up with foreign soldiers on the soil of the United States of America and the American people will go into slavery.”

Warning that the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision puts religious freedom “absolutely, unquestionably and unequivocally” at risk, former Southern Baptist Convention political official Richard Land said today that the decision could even land pastors in jail for refusing to perform same-sex marriages.

“Unless we have a spiritual awakening in America, the battle for traditional marriage is over and the battle for religious freedom has begun,” Land told Newsmax’s J.D. Hayworth.

“I know it’s difficult for liberals to understand this, but we have convictions,” he said. “And convictions can’t be coerced and they can’t be intimidated and they can’t be threatened. We’re going to speak the truth in love. Just because five lawyers say same-sex marriage is legal, that doesn’t make it moral and that doesn’t make it right.”

When Hayworth asked him if the Supreme Court’s decision means pastors could end up in jail for refusing to perform marriages for gay and lesbian couples, Land responded that “it could” after a few “intermediate steps.”

Of course, in the dozens of states that allowed gay and lesbian couples to marry before last week’s decision, not one pastor has been thrown into jail for refusing to perform such a marriage, just as nearly 50 years after the Supreme Court struck down interracial marriage bans, clergy are still free to refuse to perform such marriages. Even some of Land’s fellow Southern Baptist leaders have denied the possibility that pastors will be sent to jail for refusing to perform gay couple’s weddings.

WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah patted himself on the back in a column yesterday for deciding to “risk prosecution for ‘hate thoughts’ by raising what the Bible says about homosexuality,” which he said will lead to God’s judgment.

“Judgment isn’t just coming. It is here,” Farah said. “This is it. It could get worse, but the Supreme Court ruling on marriage was, in fact, itself a form of divine judgment on America.”

Farah, who predicted that millions of people will flee America as a result of the gay marriage ruling, said that Americans are “getting their just deserts [sic], as are the rest of us who have not been the salt and light needed to hold back judgment.”

“Progress on this journey often comes in small increments, sometimes two steps forward, one step back, propelled by the persistent effort of dedicated citizens,” Obama said. “And then sometimes there are days like this, when that slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.”

I found that last line to be revealing.

In the Bible, justice indeed can come swiftly as an act of God. But the only time the word “thunderbolt” is used in Scripture, in Psalm 78:48, is to describe judgment on the land of Egypt during the Exodus.

That’s what I believe hit America like a thunderbolt Friday – not justice, but judgment.

God is giving America over to her lusts and pride because, like ancient Israel, she has turned away her heart from Him, though He was like a faithful husband to them both.

America is, indeed, getting justice, but not the way Obama and the moral anarchists think of it. They are getting their just deserts [sic], as are the rest of us who have not been the salt and light needed to hold back judgment.

Judgment isn’t just coming. It is here. This is it. It could get worse, but the Supreme Court ruling on marriage was, in fact, itself a form of divine judgment on America.

Let me risk prosecution for “hate thoughts” by raising what the Bible says about homosexuality, the behavior that opened this spiritual Pandora’s box. …

There were no thunderbolts last week. But, rest assured, they are coming.

The mood was apparently apoplectic at a press conference held by gay-rights opponents in front of the Alabama state judicial building yesterday, as one Republican state official called the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision “an assault on God, on Christian heritage and on our culture” and warned that the “runaway judiciary is a bigger threat to the United States than ISIS” and “liberal judges have done [more] harm to our country and our Constitution than Al Qaeda.”

Public Service Commissioner Chip Beeker, who made the ISIS remarks, was joined by Joe Godfrey of the Alabama Citizens Action Project, who warned that Christians will soon be fired from their jobs just for attending church and by John Eidsmoe, the influential Christian Reconstructionist thinker and Michele Bachmann mentor, who said that the Supreme Court’s decision is moot because two justices who had performed legal same-sex weddings should have recused themselves.

Public Service Commissioner Chip Beeker told the crowd that "five unelected and unaccountable justices imposed their will on the people of Alabama and the United States."

"This was not an interpretation of the Constitution. It was an assault on God, on Christian heritage and on our culture," Beeker said.

"The runaway judiciary is a bigger threat to the United States than Isis. Liberal judges have done harm to our country and our constitution than Al Qaeda."

…

Joe Godfrey, executive director of the Alabama Citizens Action Program, which lobbies the Legislature on behalf of churches, said people who attend churches that oppose same-sex marriage could be threatened with losing their jobs.

"I predict it's going to happen when big corporations, CEOs, tell people that work as their employees, ''You know, if you keep going to that church that teaches against homosexuality, teaches what the Bible says, we're going to have to let you go.'

"So they're going to be forced to make a choice between a church that they attend and have been attending for years, and their job."

…

[John] Eidsmoe also said the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision was illegitimate because two of the justices who supported it -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan -- had performed same-sex marriages.

The foundation had filed a motion for Ginsburg and Kagan to recuse themselves from the case.

"They were incapable of considering this question objectively," Eidsmore said. "And therefore, they had every duty to recuse."